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About The Hermiston herald. (Hermiston, Or.) 19??-1984 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 7, 1937)
Thursday, January 7, 1937 THE HERMISTON HERALD, HERMISTON, OREGON. Crochet Tot Snug and Warm Three-Piece Set DEPUTY OF THE DEVIL ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ Copyright, SYNOPSIS Dr. G reeding, a wealthy and talented middle aged surgeon, is possessed of seem ingly supernatural powers. He is able to anticipate what people say before they ut ter a word; occasionally he can wish for something extraordinary to happen and have the wish fulfilled. Greeding meets Ira Jerrell, a wealthy business friend of his own age, who tells him he loves his daughter Nancy and would like to marry her. Dr. Greeding is pleased and tells Jerrell he has a clear field. Nancy, how ever. is in love with Dan Carlisle, an as sistant professor at the University who has little means. They discuss marriage, but decide to delay talking to her father about It. Nancy, who has been playing tennis with Dan that afternoon, tells her father she had been playing with u girl friend. Greeding knows this is untrue and is secret ly enraged. Stepping into his wife’s room, his eye (alls on a marble statuette which he dislikes. He picks it up. wishing he could smash it to bits. Suddenly it is snatched from his grasp as by an invisible force and burst asunder. Mrs. Greeding is greatly disturbed over the mysterious de struction of the statuette. The doctor makes light of it , By BEN AMES WILLIAMS CHAPTER II—Continued “He’s a pauper, always will be. Or the next thing to it.” “Do you think that makes so much difference, Ned?” she urged gently. “And—after all, isn’t that Nancy’s business?” “I won’t have it,” he insisted. “I shall make it my business.” "It’s possible, you know,” she re minded him gravely, “that you— can't do anything about it. Nancy has a will of her own, and—an in come of her own, later, apart from you. From my father." • He said tensely: “Myra, what’s got into you? You’ve always stood shoulder to shoulder with me.” 1 “You’ve always done things I could agree with, and support,” she replied. “But I think you would be wrong to oppose Nancy, if she loves Dan, without a better reason than the fact that he has no money. After all, his family is fine.” And she urged: “Finish dress ing, Ned. We must go.” He started to speak, then held his tongue. He returned to his own room for vest and coat; and when he came back, she was ready. “Twenty minutes past seven," she said. “We’re supposed to be there at a quarter of, and it’s half an hour’s drive.” He said: “The others will be late. Wait." He had decided to “He’s a Pauper, Always Will Be.” speck. “I want to tell you some thing. Ira Jerrell asked me to lunch with him today. He wants tc mar ry Nancy.” Her eyes widened. “But Ned, he’s as old as you are!" she protested. “Two or three years younger,” he corrected. “And I’m not old!” He was fighting to control the fury in him. “Oh, Ned,” she protested. “In twenty years he will be in old man; and she—” “He won’t live twenty years,” Doctor Greeding said explicitly. “I operated on him, you remember. He comes of a short-lived family, and he himself has a heart weak ness, latent now, but bound to de velop. He won’t live twenty years; and when he dies, he will leave Nancy still a young woman, and wealthy enough to—” Her cheek was pale. “Oh Ned, that’s horrible!” “It’s sensible!" he insisted. She stared at him in amazement. “Ned, sometimes 1 can t under stand you." she confessed. “There’s a hard, ruthless streak in you Most of the time you're gentle and loyal and fine; but—I’m afraid of you myself, sometimes.” His lips were tight with rige. “I'm finding out a lot of things about myself,” he exclaimed, and he laughed unpleasantly. “It's queer you never noticed them be fore." “You’ve changed lately,” she ad mitted. He cried: “I—" But she touched his arm. “Hush,” she protested. Some one knocked at the door, and she opened it. Ruth was there. “Thomas wants to know will you want him to drive,” she said in a resentful tone. Doctor Greeding shook his head. “No, I’ll take Mrs. Greeding’s car.” he answered shortly. And Mrs. Greeding, before Ruth could turn away, keeping the serv ant near as a shield between them, touched his arm. “Come, Ned,” she said. “We’ll have to hurry.” So they went downstairs togeth er . , . He drove headlong, some of the fury in him communicating itself to the car. The Jordan home was in Winchester ; and Doctor Greeding came to the Fellsway and turned in to it to escape the slower traffic on the avenue. Mrs. Greeding protested uncer tainly: “Ned, you’re driving aw fully fast.” “You don’t want to be late,” he retorted harshly; and she shrank away from him. A traffic-light halted them; and when it changed to green, the car beside them leaped ahead and cut in front of Doctor Greeding. His brakes ground to avoid a collision; and the offending car darted away. He said through clenched teeth: “The rat! I hope he breaks his neck!” The other car was no more than a hundred yards ahead of them. Doc tor Greeding heard like an echo of his words a loud explosion, and saw the other automobile lurch drunk- enly to the right against the curb. It tilted up and over, and came down crashing. They were so close behind it that he had to jam his brakes hard down to stop in time. Other machines penned them in, and instantly there was a small jam of traffic, and a motorcycle officer swept to the scene. Mrs. Greeding cried: “Ned, he must be hurt! Go see!” Doctor Greeding got out of his car. His legs were stiff, yet shak ing. His shoulders jerked convul sively. His brow was wet and cold. There was in him an incredible cer tainty hideous and horrifying, and yet in some dark fashion intoxicat ing and full of promise too. He went forward to where the po liceman had dragged the driver out of the wrecked macnine. The man lay limp, motionless. “I’m a physician,” said Doctor Greeding briefly, and the policeman gave way to him. Doctor Greeding made a swift examination. Then he stood up and brushed his hands; he spoke in a voice scarce ly recognizable as his own. “Nothing to be done. His neck is broken, Officer.” The man was dead. He was a middle-aged man, a little shabby. His was an inexpensive car. It was crushed and battered, now, fit only to be junked. The man, fortunate ly, had been alone. Doctor Greed ing, looking down at him, felt ter ror and contrition—and a dizzying sense of power! The policeman asked at large: “Anyone see what happened?” Doctor Greeding cleared his throat, steadied his voice. There was no more anger in him; but rather a quick caution. “He was driving very rapidly,” he explained to the officer. “He passed us at the last traffic-light, and cut in on me pretty sharply. Drunk, do you .hink?" “No smell of booze on him,” the policeman replied. “His front tire blew out when he hit the turn. I guess that's the answer." He pro duced his notebook and took Doc tor Greeding’s name and address, then turned to the others who had pressed around. Doctor Greeding. at the first op portunity, returned to his car, took the wheel and moved away. He said nothing; but Mrs. Greeding watched him, saw his deep distress. "Was he killed?" she asked. The Doctor nodded. His brow was moist, his tones shaken. “My ra. his neck was broken!” he said unsteadily, and tried to laugh. “That makes me feel—curiously guilty, almost responsible!” She touched his hand reassuring ly, “Ned. dear, don’t be absurd!” “I feel as though I'd wished it on him,” he admitted. “You're perfectly ridiculous,” she urged loyally. “He was driving like an idiot, it just happened to— happen right before our eyes.” “Poor devil!” Doctor Greeding muttered; and she looked at him in a secret astonishment, it was not like her husband to be thus senselessly disturbed; and she sought to turn his thoughts into an other channel. "You’d better hurry, Ned,” she reminded him. "Were late al ready!” So he drove on tn silence; but he could not so easily dismiss this tragedy from his mind. Common sense told him that this was no more than one of those incredibly apt coincidences which occur in the life of every man, yet something + + ♦ Ben Ames Williams. ♦ WNU Service. deeper than common sense, some thing rooted in the very base and foundation of his soul, cried out against accepting such a simple ex planation. He was trembling and shaken with a vast and perilous excitement, like one who stands be fore a closed door, long locked, in which now the key is fixed, waiting only for him to turn it, and open the door, and enter in. Suddenly his hands wavered on the wheel, so that Mrs. Greeding caught and steadied it; and she cried sharply: "Ned!” "It’s all right,” he said huskily. “I’m upset, that’s all.” And he add ed: “I’ve a mind to turn around and go home. I don’t feel like see ing people.” “Nonsense!” she insisted. “It’s what you need." “Oh, I suppose so,” he assented. But she watched him thereafter with an alert attention, till they came to their destination, where other cars were already parked, and alighted and went in. On the way up the walk to the door, she held his arm, her eyes full of solici tude, till he smiled at her reassur ingly. “I need a cocktail,” he said. "That will pick me up.” And in fact, once in the house, greeting a dozen people in succes sion, he was swept out of his own distracting thoughts. He gulped a cocktail and another, and felt new strength flow into him. In the draw ing-room he recognized, standing with Mrs. Jordan and two or three others by the hearth, Professor Car lisle, who was young Dan’s father. The professor was a small, lean, gray old man with clear blue eyes; and Doctor Greeding, with an im pulse to cultivate the other as a possible ally against Dan and Nan cy, crossed to speak to him. As he did so, a young woman by the professor’s elbow turned to watch him approach; and Doctor Greeding unconsciously paused as he saw her countenance. She was tall, her glance serene and steady. As though she marked his hesita tion, there was a faint amusement in her eyes; but after that momen tary pause, Doctor Greeding werft on, and Mrs. Jordan welcomed him into the group and made introduc tions. "You know Professor Carlisle, Doctor Greeding? And Mary Ann? I’ve put Miss Carlisle beside you at dinner. Doctor, so you can talk shop as much as you please!” He shook hands with Professor Carlisle and with the girl. Mary Ann’s hand in his had a strength which pleased him. He found her deeply, stirringly beautiful. At Mrs. Jordan’s word, she smiled again; and Doctor Greeding echoed: “Talk shop?” But before Mary Ann could re ply, Mrs. Jordan swept her away. Doctor Greeding and Professor Car lisle were left together. Doctor Greeding said casually: "I’ve met your son, of course, Professor; but I didn't know you had a daughter too.” Professor Carlisle smiled fondly. “She doesn’t—circulate as much as Dan does,” he assented. “She's a registered nurse—takes her profes sion rather seriously." "That is apt to be a—sporadic occupation," Doctor Greeding sug gested. "She was Doctor Homans’ surgi cal nurse until he died," Professor Carlisle explained. "But since then The exodus toward the dining- room began. Doctor Greeding found himself placed at Mrs. Jordan’s right, Mary Ann on his other side. Mrs. Greeding was at the other end of the table, beside Professor Car lisle. The effect of the cocktails the Doctor had taken began to pass, and memory of the tragedy he had witnessed so short a time ago re turned to disturb him. By and by he heard Professor Carlisle at the other end of the table utter a word at once strange and vaguely famil iar. The word was poltergeist. It touched some chord of memory in him, and he tried to hear what the other was saying; but Mary Ann just then released herself from the man beyond her, and smiled and suggested: “We don’t actually have to talk shop, I suppose. Doctor Greeding; tut we ought to say something to each other!” He forgot his interest in Professor Carlisle. “Mrs. Jordan contrives these things so carefully, ’ he as sented in an amused undertone. “Gives us our cue. You worked with Doctor Homans, your father says?" "For three years,” she assented. He chuckled, curiously stimulat ed. forgetting for the present that man with a broken neck limp on the turf beside the road. “I know your brother Dan,” he remarked. “See him around the house occasionally. I expect you know Nancy.” "Oh, yes,” she agreed. “Ot course. I'm older than she." She laughed softly. “And our orbits don’t cross very often.” She continued to talk to him, in a pleasant and diverting fashion, of a variety of matters; and Doctor Greeding responded, stimulated by her beauty and her wit. Once at something she said, he threw back his head and laughed so heartily that for a moment everyone else at the table was silenced. He enjoyed this talk with Mary Ann, but when they rose from the table, he lost her; and thereafter, abstraction descended on him like a cloak. Mrs. Greeding came at last to his rescue, and they made their farewells. He w as not anxious to go, had hoped to find himself once more near Mary Ann; and in the car, he said almost resentfully: "Leaving early, aren’t we?” “I saw how tired you were,” she replied, and added with a curious sidelong glance: “Though you seemed to enjoy yourself at dinner.” “Miss Carlisle is attractive, in teresting,” he assented. She seemed about to speal., hesi tated, said then: “I suppose you’re still worrying about that poor man who was killed. But that’s just sil- Abstraction Descended on Him Like a Cloak. ly, Ned. Forget him.” He nodded silently, and she sought some topic to distract him. “Professor Carlisle was explain ing to me about poltergeists," she volunteered in a sprightly tone. “I had told him of the statuette in my room being broken so mysterious ly; and he said we probably had a poltergeist in the house!’ Doctor Greeding remembered. “I’ve heard the word, comewhere. “It comes from the German,” she explained quickly, grateful for his attention. “It means 'a racketing spirit’; and when there is one in a house, it throws stones, crockery, furniture—all sorts of things—all around everywhere." And she wem on hurriedly: “Pro fessor Carlisle said usually these things happen where there is a young girl who is sick, or half crazy, or something.” She laughed. “So I told him Nancy certainly wasn’t either sick or crazy; and Ruth may not be so awfully well, but she's over forty and perfectly sane, and cook’s fifty if she’s a day!” Doctor Greeding, in a sudden startled interest, asked in a care- fu‘ tone: “Did Professor Carlisle of fer any explanation of these phe nomena?” His pulse, absurdly, pounded. “Oh, he says there isn’t any,” she assured him. “He says such things probably don’t really happen; that they’re imagined, or faked, or something. Pictures can’t just fall off walls, of course; and fires don’t start by themselves." He nodded vigorously. “Of course not,” he agreed. “All nonsense!” But he had a sudden, vivid mem ory of a sultry summer day, a day in haytime. Himself a small boy in the mow, stowing away the hay as it was tossed up to him. his nostrils full of choking dust, stifled, miser able. He hated the work, the barn, the hay; he wished furiously for any manner of rescue from this toil. And suddenly there was smoke in the air and flames about his feet, and he leaped down out of the mow —and had need to work no more that day, but only to watch the barn burn merrily. Mrs. Greeding’s voice went on, an undercurrent to his thoughts: “Things don't just fly around for no reason.” And he said, surprisingly uneasy: “Of course not! All those yarns are pure fraud, or superstition. My ra 1 Old wives’ tales! Or trickery! That sort of stunt it the stock-in- trade of professional mediums; but Houdini demonstrated that he could achieve, by natural physical means, every effect the mediums produce. He exploded the whole fake!” “I know he did,” Mrs. Greeding assented; but she added with incon sequent and maddeningly logical stubbornness: “And of course I don’t believe in them—in mediums. But the fact that Houdini could do such things by trickery doesn’t prove that others couldn't do them by spiritualism does it, Ned? I mean, just because I can tip a chair over with my hands doesn’t prove that you can’t tip it over by just looking at it!” He said harshly, feeling himself accused, a sudden clutch at his throat: “I, Myra? Nonsense! I don’t pretend to any psychic pow ers!” “Of course not!” she cried. “I didn’t mean you. I meant—any one.” And she added: “Profes sor Carlisle says there are so many things which couldn't happen, and didn’t happen—and yet they did happen!” “Tosh!” he protested. “Well, anyway,” she declared, “I wish this poltergeist, or whatever it was, would put my statuette back together again.” Doctor Greeding did not like this conversation. It struck too close home. He turned into their own drive with deep relief. At the door of her dressing-room Mrs. Greeding kissed him good- night. “Now, don’t worry about that poor man who was killed, Ned,” she insisted. He smiled ruefully, and he said: "I know it’s absurd, but—I do feel responsible. I think I’ll check up, find out whether his family is left in straits.” She said fondly: “You’d carry all the world’s burdens on your shoulders if you could. Good night." Till she slept she could hear him moving about in his room next to hers. He had, in fact, no inclination for sleep. In pajamas and dress ing-gown, he sat for a while trying to read, but the book failed to hold him ... It was of course absurd to suppose that his own wish could have caused that man’s death; and yet Doctor Greeding was disturbed. There were emotions which poisoned a man’s soul and his body too; could it be possible that hate and anger might sometimes be like deadly shafts projected into the world? He himself was almost immune to these passions; he prided him self on this fact, and he thought re gretfully of his anger of a while ago. So, seeing the cause of it, he remembered Nancy, and the prob lem she presented. There was a new kindliness in Doctor Greeding tonight. Of course, he decided, if Nancy truly loved Dan, he would not want her to marry Jerrell; yet she might be led to weigh the one man against the other, might make for herself the wise and sensible choice. It occurred to him inconsequent- ly that if Nancy married Dan, Mary Ann would become like a member of the family; and that prospect had attractions. But his thoughts in the end returned to the dead man, and to the broken statuette; and he remembered at last what Mrs. Greeding had said about this ab surdity of poltergeists. It was an absurdity; and yet he wished sud denly to be informed on the subject, and with this purpose in mind he went downstairs to select as the only ready source of information a volume of the encyclopedia, Nancy came home while he was there, met him in the lower hall. She exclaimed: “Why, Father! Still up?” He put his arm around her, proud ly kissed her. She was beautiful, straight, slender, young and strong. "I wasn’t sleepy, Nancy,” he con fessed. “Came down to get a book.” She looked at the volume under his arm. “The encyclopedia! That will put you to sleep, certainly.” “Theater tonight?” he asked “Yes,” she agreed. “With Juditb Plank.” (TO BE CONTINUED) Magna Charta Signed by King John’s Royal Mark Every schoolboy knows that Magna Charta was signed by King John at Runnymede on June 15th. 1215, observes a writer in London Answers Magazine. But every schoolboy happens to be wrong! 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